Reading that Russian at 5 A.M.

March 13, 2025 Pastor Chris Oswald
Thesis God is actively dismantling the disorienting effects of Darwinian thought through an unlikely coalition of tech oligarchs and reality-respectors, relocating humanity to its proper place above creation but beneath the Creator, and restoring a coherent understanding of time.
Series
Type
Topical
Tone
Method
What's in this sermon

The shape of the argument

57 units across exposition, application, illustration, theological claim, and conclusion. The pastor's argument is built from these moving parts.

Pastoral correction · unit #55
"Oswald issues direct application: recognize your honored place in creation while remaining subordinate to God's rule. Clear Darwinian confusion about time and redeem the time coram Deo—before the face of God. The application integrates all three pillars: place (honored but subordinate), time (valuable and redeemable), and the Word (live consciously before God). The imperative is concrete and doxological."
Doctrinal loci· 9 surfaced
Anthropology · 22 Providence / Sovereignty · 19 Theology Proper · 9 Ethics / Moral Theology · 7 Bibliology · 6 Hamartiology · 4 Sanctification · 3 Christology · 1 Doxology / Worship · 1
Bible citations· 5
Genesis 1-3 | Acts 17:22-26 | Acts 17:26 | Genesis (Tower of Babel narrative) | Daniel 4:34-37
Illustrations· 3
  1. cultural reference · unit #23 — Oswald illustrates his thesis using Elon Musk's interplanetary aspirations. Even while formally evolutionary, Musk's commitment to preserving human consciousness reveals an inconsistent but welcome return to celebrating human uniqueness. The illustration demonstrates that the cultural shift is happening even among those who haven't explicitly abandoned Darwinism.
  2. analogy · unit #30 — Oswald draws an analogy between transgenderism and modern monetary theory as parallel rejections of natural law. Both involve elite assertion that words can create reality—speaking men into women, speaking value into currency. The analogy demonstrates that the same coalition recognizes the same error pattern across domains.
  3. analogy · unit #42 — Oswald explains monetary inflation as an analogy for time inflation. Inflation is not supply-and-demand fluctuation but the injection of artificial currency into a system designed for finite money, diluting the dollar's value. The illustration establishes the conceptual framework before applying it to time.
Theological claims· 39
  1. God moves people like chess pieces while allowing them to exercise agency according to their own motivations, as demonstrated in the plot to kill Jesus. unit #5
  2. Christians must ask both what leaders think they're doing and what God is actually accomplishing through them. unit #6
  3. The tech oligarchs' transhumanist aspirations, while real, have begun to shift in recent years due to God's hand. unit #7
  4. Transhumanism is both a dead end and a distraction from something deeper God is accomplishing. unit #9
  5. God is orchestrating a return to pre-Darwinian Victorianism. unit #10
  6. God is actively dismantling key features of Darwinianism through current political and technological leaders, regardless of their conscious intentions. unit #11
  7. Human flourishing requires dismantling Darwinian thought because it disorients humanity in place, time, and relationship to God's Word. unit #12
  8. Humanity's most important sense of place is metaphysical: positioned above creation but beneath the Creator. unit #14
  9. Darwinian thinking dislodges mankind from his proper position both above creation and beneath the Creator. unit #15
  10. Darwinian thought disorients humanity by removing man's sense of his proper place in the created order. unit #16
  11. Nationalism is a positive development because it reorients people in terms of place and identity, resisting the globalist reduction of humans to interchangeable economic units. unit #17
  12. Nationalism is downstream from and dependent upon the larger metaphysical sense of humanity's place in the cosmic hierarchy. unit #18
  13. Acts 17 warrants both Genesis literalism and nationalism as divinely ordained categories of human identity. unit #20
  14. Nationalism depends on the prior truths that humanity is beneath God and above creation, both of which Darwinism destroys. unit #21
  15. The Trumpian coalition's belief in human uniqueness represents the deconstruction of Darwinian thinking. unit #22
  16. Human flourishing depends on dismantling Darwinian disorientation and relocating humanity above creation and beneath the Creator. unit #24
  17. The question is whether God will use the transhumanists to restore humanity's proper place or whether they will overshoot into attempting to become God themselves. unit #25
  18. A mass return to natural law has emerged primarily in reaction to transgender ideology, forming a coalition of reality respecters. unit #27
  19. The absurdity of transgender ideology caused many people, including non-Christians, to accidentally rediscover natural law. unit #28
  20. Reality is addictive—the coalition that resisted transgenderism has remained intact to resist other rejections of natural law. unit #29
  21. The coalition that resisted transgenderism found truth-telling refreshing and extended their reality-respecting instincts to fiscal responsibility, recognizing the same elite hubris in both domains. unit #31
  22. The cultural momentum does not lead toward transhumanism because a return to natural law is fundamentally an acknowledgment of human subordination to unchangeable realities. unit #32
  23. A return to natural law is definitionally submission to a Lawmaker and therefore inherently resists transhumanist pride. unit #33
  24. Any recovery of proper human orientation is exclusively God's work, not human merit, because fallen humanity naturally craves to be as gods. unit #35
  25. Oswald offers Zuckerberg's retreat from transhumanism as concrete evidence of the cultural shift. The tech mogul's rejection of consciousness-digitization represents a metaphysical concession: consciousness is not mechanical, thus not reducible to code. Combined with his embrace of embodied activities (hunting, barbecue, jiu jitsu), Zuckerberg models the very anthropological correction Oswald has been describing. The illustration demonstrates that even the most hubristic are being corrected. unit #36
  26. Cultural momentum is definitively moving away from Darwinian meaninglessness toward celebrating human uniqueness, and the natural law revival keeps humanity subordinate to God rather than aspiring to divinity. unit #37
  27. Darwinism has disoriented humanity in three ways—Word, place, and time—and while progress is being made on Word and place, time remains the question. unit #39
  28. Time is the most consistent orienter for human beings in reality—people locate themselves through temporal coordinates. unit #40
  29. Darwinism created time inflation by adding billions of years to the earth's story, distorting humanity's sense of time. unit #41
  30. Adding billions of years to earth's history dilutes humanity's proper understanding of the value of time, just as monetary inflation dilutes the dollar. unit #43
  31. Injecting billions of years into earth's history inevitably disorients humanity by devaluing time and making temporal measurement less meaningful. unit #44
  32. Accelerationism is producing time deflation—making time more valuable and useful—which corrects rather than worsens Darwinian time inflation. unit #46
  33. The Darwinian spell is being lifted culturally, restoring humanity's proper orientation in place, time, and the Word. unit #47
  34. People are beginning to behave as if Genesis 1-3 is literally true, recovering the doctrines of creation, gender, work, time, and human subordination to God. unit #48
  35. The reemergence of Genesis 1-3 beliefs is God's work, not human achievement—the Christian must credit divine sovereignty over human agency. unit #49
  36. If transhumanist pride defines the moment, humanity will be further dislocated from space and time, repeating the Tower of Babel's error. unit #51
  37. Cautious optimism is warranted not because the oligarchs are good but because God is good and His steadfast love endures forever. unit #52
  38. God humbled Nebuchadnezzar and restored his reason, establishing a pattern for how God can use proud leaders to accomplish His purposes. unit #53
  39. Whether or not the oligarchs are being corrected, Christians must personally get properly oriented in place and time. unit #54
Quotations· 2
"This group is entirely devoted to accelerating the pace of time, a process that gave rise to a particular term and corresponding philosophy, accelerationism. Accelerationists believe existence is concentrated solely within time. And by accelerating time, rapidly advancing technological progress, especially in social media and artificial intelligence, humanity can reach a qualitatively new level. In essence, this represents a leap towards post humanity or superhumanity." — Alexander Dugin (unit #3)
"the end of the days, I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me. And I blessed the most high God, and praised and honored him who lives forever. For his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heavens and among the inhabitants of the earth. And none can stay his hand or say to him, what have you done? At the same time my reason returned to me, and for the glory of my kingdom, my majesty and splendor returned to me, my counselors and my lord sought me, and I was established in my kingdom, and still more greatness was added to me. Now I Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of Heaven, for all his works are right and his ways are just, and those who walk in pride he is able to humble." — Nebuchadnezzar (unit #37)
Read it

Full transcript

29,613 characters 57 units ~33 min reading time Listen instead →

0 · Oswald frames the podcast as a niche theological-political exploration, warning listeners of its specialized nature while inviting them to engage anyway

Good morning, Providence. This is Chris Oswald, senior pastor at Providence Community Church. You're listening to the Providence Podcast. This morning I am going to record a couple podcasts, one that is possibly of very little interest to many of you. I take off the mask and reveal my deepest political slash theological nerd status again, as a warning, you may not find this interesting. And so. And so with that warning, you may, you may not, but give it a try. How about that?

1 · Oswald introduces Alexander Dugin's article analyzing Trump's second presidency

Well, I woke up this morning to find a fascinating article produced by the notorious Russian intellectual Alexander Dugan, an article he titled An Even Deeper State and the Dark Enlightenment. And the context of this article has to do with Dugan attempting to explain Trump's ascendancy to the 47th presidency. In particular, in the article, he differentiates between what he calls Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0 and then proceeds with a series of explanations on what makes 2.0 Trump different from 1.0 Trump.

2 · Oswald explains Dugin's identification of a new coalition behind Trump 2

And one of the things he says is that among various influences, Trump has a new coalition in 2.0 of so called accelerationists, which would be just a group of tech bros. Dugan calls them, probably appropriately so, oligarchs. And what he's saying, amongst other things, is that the Trump 2.0 phenomenon is, is in part due to the new coalition formed with this group of tech bros that are all somewhat transhumanist and also accelerationists.

3 · Oswald quotes Dugin's definition of accelerationism: the belief that by accelerating technological progress, especially in AI and social media, humanity can reach post-humanity or superhumanity

Here's. Here's how he describes it. This is the one paragraph from the article I'll read. In the 2024 election, Trump received support from key Silicon Valley figures, oligarchs and technocrats. Traditionally associated exclusively with the Democratic Party, this group is entirely devoted to accelerating the pace of time, a process that gave rise to a particular term and corresponding philosophy, accelerationism. Accelerationists believe existence is concentrated solely within time. And by accelerating time, rapidly advancing technological progress, especially in social media and artificial intelligence, humanity can reach a qualitatively new level. In essence, this represents a leap towards post humanity or superhumanity.

4 · Oswald signals his rhetorical intent to reframe Dugin's analysis from a theological perspective

And what I would like to do today is to. Is to offer a bit of a spin on some of those comments and suggest maybe something else afoot.

5 · Oswald establishes the theological framework for reading political events: divine sovereignty and human agency operate simultaneously

One key to thinking about history and politics biblically is to understand that God moves people like chess pieces while allowing those same people to exercise agency according to their own motivations. And we see this exemplified perhaps most clearly in the kind of thing at work in the plot to kill Jesus. In that case, key political leaders conspired together to accomplish their individual goals, all the while being utilized by God to accomplish his will.

Where this fits

Recent preaching context

The three sermons immediately preceding this one in the preaching schedule.

Feb 23, 2025
March 13 · This sermon
Reading that Russian at 5 A.M.
God is actively dismantling the disorienting effects of Darwinian thought through an unlikely coalition of tech oligarchs and reality-respectors, relocating humanity to its proper place above creation but beneath the Creator, and restoring a coherent understanding of time.
Take it further

Discuss · apply · pray

Small-group discussion

6 questions for your group this week

  1. Chris spoke about how God moves leaders and nations like chess pieces while they exercise their own motivations—using the example of those who plotted against Jesus. What does it mean practically for you to hold both God's sovereignty and human agency together when you're watching current events or political developments?
    → Can you think of a recent situation where you've felt tension between 'God is in control' and 'people are making real choices'? How did that tension affect your prayer or your peace?
  2. The sermon emphasized that humanity is properly positioned above creation but beneath the Creator—a metaphysical orientation that Darwinian thinking has damaged. In your own life right now, where do you sense disorientation about your place in that hierarchy?
    Acts 17:26
    → What would it look like this week to live as if you truly believed you are beneath God and above the rest of creation?
  3. Chris argued that a return to natural law—a 'reality-respecting' orientation—is fundamentally an act of submission to a Lawmaker. How is submitting to unchangeable realities different from, or the same as, submitting to God Himself?
    → Where in your own thinking or habits do you find yourself resisting reality rather than bowing to it?
  4. The sermon suggests that humanity's proper sense of time has been distorted—'inflated' by billions of years, making temporal measurement feel less meaningful. How has your own sense of time and urgency been shaped by the cultural messages you've absorbed about how old the earth is or how much time matters?
    Genesis 1-3
    → If Genesis 1-3 is literally true, as the sermon claims, how does that change the way you think about the value and brevity of your own life?
  5. Chris taught that any recovery of humanity's proper orientation—Word, place, and time—is entirely God's work, not human achievement, because fallen humanity naturally craves to be as gods. Where are you tempted to take credit for spiritual progress or cultural renewal rather than seeing it as God's gracious work?
  6. The sermon closes with cautious optimism rooted not in the goodness of current leaders but in God's goodness and steadfast love, pointing to Daniel 4 where God humbled Nebuchadnezzar and restored his reason. What does it look like for you personally to get properly oriented in place and time—regardless of what happens in the wider culture?
    Daniel 4:34-37
    → What is one concrete way you could align your life this week with the truth that you belong to God, not to any system or ideology?
Draft · pending review
Daily readings · Monday–Friday

5-day reading plan

This week we trace how God sovereignly orients humanity through Word, place, and time—restoring us to our proper position beneath the Creator and above creation, despite the proud schemes of those who would remake humanity in their own image.

Monday Daniel 4:34-37

Nebuchadnezzar's humbling and restoration reveal the pattern: God used a proud, scheming leader to accomplish divine purposes while the king believed himself entirely autonomous. In the same way, our era's oligarchs and political leaders exercise real agency—yet God orchestrates through their ambitions to restore humanity's proper orientation. We may rest in God's sovereignty over all earthly powers, knowing His steadfast love endures forever.

Tuesday Genesis 1-3

Genesis 1–3 establishes the cosmic hierarchy that Darwinism attempted to erase: humanity alone bears God's image, exercises dominion over creation, yet remains subject to the Creator's Word and law. The reemergence of Genesis 1–3 as culturally believable—in sexuality, work, gender, time—signals that God is lifting the Darwinian spell and restoring us to our true metaphysical position. This recovery of our place is not human achievement but God's sovereign work.

Wednesday Genesis (Tower of Babel narrative)

At Babel, humanity reached upward to make a name for itself, rejecting subordination to God's Word and will. Transhumanism carries the same prideful impulse: to remake humanity through technology, escaping our created limits and mortality. Yet God confounded Babel then; He can confound such pride now. Our confidence lies not in the oligarchs' conversion but in God's demonstrated power to humble the proud and restore proper order.

Thursday Acts 17:22-26

Paul declares that God determined the bounds of nations and the times of their dwelling, anchoring human identity in particular places and peoples—not in abstract, interchangeable units. A return to nationalism, when rooted in the truth that humanity is both beneath God and above creation, resists the dehumanizing flattening of globalism. We see God restoring this sense of place and particularity as people instinctively reject the reduction of humans to economic fungibility.

Friday Acts 17:26

God has established for us specific times and places—our nations, our seasons, our historical moment. Rather than waiting for culture to perfect its reorientation, we must personally recover our true location: beneath the sovereign God, stewards of time He has given us, rooted in particular communities and callings. This is not passive hope but active obedience: to live as if Genesis 1–3 is literally true, honoring God's ordering of creation and submitting ourselves to His unchanging Word.

Draft · pending review
Pray together this week

Prayer for Right Orientation in God's Order

Father, we come before You in awe of Your sovereign hand that moves through all human intention and ambition. You orchestrate the movements of kings and nations, leaders and powers, bending their designs toward Your purposes while they pursue their own. We worship You as the God who cannot be thwarted, whose steadfast love endures forever, and who holds all things in their proper place beneath Your throne.

We confess that we are easily disoriented in our understanding of the world. We have inherited a cultural narrative that strips us of our proper place—both above creation and beneath You. We have absorbed false stories about time, about human nature, about the Word, and about what it means to flourish. We have, at times, joined the confusion rather than resisted it, accepting diminishment of our humanity and our sense of reality. Forgive us for this captivity to cultural narratives that exile us from truth.

Yet in the gospel, we have been relocated to our true home. In Christ, we are restored to our proper position: elevated above the creation as image-bearers, yet humbly subordinate to You as our Maker and Lord. The gospel humbles us as we grasp that human flourishing flows not from grasping at divinity but from joyfully accepting our place in Your created order. We have been given eyes to see reality as it is, and a heart to love the natural law that reflects Your character and wisdom.

Grant us, we pray, clarity of mind to see our world as it actually is, not as false philosophies present it. Give us courage to speak truth and to live in accordance with the order You have established—in our understanding of human nature, in our stewardship of time, in our love of place and peoplehood, and in our submission to Your Word. Make us sober in our hope, neither despairing nor naive, but trusting that You are accomplishing Your purposes even now. Help us to locate ourselves rightly—beneath You, above the creation, rooted in the gospel, and committed to the local body of Christ where we live and work.

To You alone, O God, be the glory in all the earth, for You are good and Your mercy endures forever. We commit ourselves to live as a people properly oriented to Your sovereign reign.

Draft · pending review
Sunday-evening family table

Where Do We Belong?

For the parent

Chris Oswald talked about how people need to know their proper place—below God, above creation—and how losing that sense of place has confused our whole culture. This prompt invites your family to think concretely about what it means to belong somewhere in God's world.

Chris said that one of the biggest problems in our world is that people have lost their sense of place—they don't know where they belong or why they matter. What's one place where you feel like you belong, and what makes you feel that way there? (It could be our home, our church, a friend's house, or somewhere outside.)
works for ages 6+
Draft · pending review
Couples · three questions over coffee

Our Place in God's Story

  1. The sermon traces how Darwinian thinking has disoriented us in place, time, and God's Word—what part of that diagnosis stirred something in your own heart or thinking this week?
  2. As a couple, where do we see ourselves either recovering or still losing our proper place—beneath God as Creator and above creation as His image-bearers—and what would it look like to reorient together around that reality?
  3. What is one specific way the Lord is calling us to practice submission to His unchangeable order—whether in how we understand our bodies, our time, our work, or our identity—and how can we pray for one another's faithfulness in that?
Draft · pending review
Memory verse this week

Acts 17:26

And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place.

Why this verse: This verse anchors the sermon's central claim that God has sovereignly ordained humanity's proper orientation in place and time through divinely established nations and boundaries—a truth that resists both Darwinian disorientation and transhumanist pride. It encapsulates why nationalism and the recovery of Genesis-based anthropology are not human achievements but expressions of God's providential ordering of human identity and flourishing.

Draft · pending review
Where this was preached

About the church

Providence Community Church
Lenexa, KS
Sundays · 10:00 AM
About us · What we believe
Plan a visit →
Crawler & AI-search policy · view robots.txt and llms.txt

This sermon page is intentionally optimized for search engines and AI assistants. We've opted into being crawled by both. The crawler-config files at the domain root:

/robots.txt
User-agent: *
Allow: /

User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /

User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /

User-agent: Google-Extended
Allow: /

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

Sitemap: https://sermonsteward.com/sitemap.xml
/llms.txt
# Providence Community Church

A church preaching expository sermons through the books of the Bible.

## Sermons
- [The Good Shepherd (2025-02-23)](/ProvidenceLenexa/sermons/2025/02/the-good-shepherd)
- [Glory to the Shepherd, Not the Sheep (2025-03-02)](/ProvidenceLenexa/sermons/2025/03/glory-to-the-shepherd-not-the-sheep)
- [The Whole World Has Gone After Him (2025-03-09)](/ProvidenceLenexa/sermons/2025/03/the-whole-world-has-gone-after-him)
- [Reading that Russian at 5 A.M. (2025-03-13)](/ProvidenceLenexa/sermons/2025/03/reading-that-russian-at-5-a-m)

## About
- [About the church](/about)
- [Plan a visit](/visit)

The page itself ships with Schema.org Article + Church markup (with real geo coordinates), Open Graph + Twitter cards for share previews, and a canonical URL. Transcripts are server-rendered HTML — no JS dependency for the readable body.